‘You can’t deny it,’ said the Canon; ‘for my part, it was at first sight. Well, Joyce, to please me, and your father—though I don’t know that he has the same right—you will go back to that moment, and look your best. I want you to look very nice indeed—so does my wife. We mustn’t give the adversary occasion to blaspheme.’
‘But I have no adversary,’ said Joyce, ‘unless it were——’
‘Eh? I don’t doubt you have somewhere, as all of us have, somebody you’ve been too good to. And keep away from that little parson woman, Joyce. I’m a parson myself, you will say; but there are parsons and parsons. Is that some one leaving your house? and there is your father standing out in the night air without a hat; the most foolish thing he could do. You catch cold without any warning, and then there’s no getting rid of it. Hey, Hayward! don’t shut the door upon us, please; I’ve brought you home your little girl.’
The Colonel shouted, ‘Why, Jenkinson, is it you?’—as we have seen—and stood in the doorway to greet his visitor. ‘Come in,’ he said, ‘come in out of the fog. If you had been coming in the opposite direction you’d have run into Bellendean. He has not been five minutes gone.’
‘I only wish we had run into him,’ said the Canon in his rolling bass; ‘it might have cleared up some things.’
‘What do you mean, Canon? He’s a nice fellow, but not particularly clever. Come in, and don’t stand out in the fog.’
‘Go in yourself, and don’t catch cold. I’ve done my duty now; I’ve brought you home, Joyce. Take care of her, Hayward,’ said the Canon, as he strode away, marching like a regiment, with his long coat swinging, and the black silk waistcoat charging the heavy air. Colonel Hayward withdrew within the shelter of the door, putting up his hand to his head, which was his vulnerable point.
‘Take care of her!’ he said; ‘my own girl! I should think I would take care of her. These parsons take a great deal upon them. They think they always know better than other people though they have neither chick nor child.’ The Colonel repeated these words to himself with a little chuckle, as he went back to his library to finish something he had been reading in the paper before dinner. The Canon looked very big and imposing, and took a great deal of authority upon himself, but he was wholly without experience in the point upon which he presumed to lecture his old friend. Take care of her—his own little girl! a pretty thing for a man to say who had never succeeded in securing anything of the kind for himself.
Joyce went into the drawing-room with her heart beating, sick and faint. She seemed to feel in the air that he had been there. There was something of him still about the room—the mark of his elbow on a cushion, the sensation of his breath. He had come after all. She wanted to stand where he had stood, to breathe the same air, and then—and then—to fly where she could never see him—where it should be impossible to be tempted to his destruction. No, no; and to break Greta’s heart. Her own throbbed quick but low. There had been a momentary spring, but only for a moment. No, no, not for his harm, and the breaking of Greta’s heart. His coming seemed to have precipitated and brought near what was so far off a little while ago. She was on the edge of the precipice now—and there was something in the sense of the giddy vacancy before her that seemed to sweep and suck her towards the edge. She went in—and found Mrs. Hayward standing waiting for her in the middle of the room.
‘Where have you been, Joyce? where have you been?—to-day of all days! Captain Bellendean has been here——’